Determinación del fin

Let’s end this chapter with some general remarks. We found in this section that an implementation of theInqD framework brings further insights into the semantic core of

the Mandarin particle dou. In particular, the plurality requirementof dou that are quite distinctively defined in Chapter 2 are manifested here asinquisitivenessat different levels of the context—in ∀-FC constructions and unconditionals it corresponds to context- level inquisitiveness, and in dou’s association with plural expressions it corresponds to possibility-level inquisitiveness. We further explored the possibility of defining the plurality requirement as apost-supposition, with the original purpose of explaining the co-occurrence of dou and distributive quantifiers like mei-ge(every). However, as we can see from §4.3, the post-suppositional analysis ofdou not only realizes the original purpose, but also shows great potential in covering a much wider empirical landscape, at least for the quantifer-distributor use ofdou. In the following discussion, we will refer to this characterization of the plurality requirement as apost-suppositional inquisitiveness. Let’s trace back a bit and reconsider the unconditional and ∀-FC constructions. In Chapter 2, we adhered to Rawlins (2013)’s idea in characterizing unconditionals, as well as free choice constructions, as conveying orthogonality. On the other hand, for the orthogonality to hold non-trivially, it seems necessary for the antecedent question to stay inquisitive/unanswered after the message. To be more precise, as unconditionals and∀- FC constructions are usually used to express that certain conditions will holdregardless, itwon’t helpin resolving the antecedent question, and the answerwouldn’t mattereither. This characterization is conceptually very similar to post-suppositional inquisitiveness, both to be construed as ‘after the update, the question is still unresolved, (because it doesn’t matter)’. Further, if post-suppositional inquisitiveness is indeed present in the semantic interpretations of free choice effect, it seems to provide a promising mechanism in accounting for the licensing problem w.r.t. various free choice items. For instance, it is commonly observed that free choice constructions in episodic context are at least deviant:

(134) a. *Any student came. b. ?Shui who dou dou lai come -le. -asp.

Intended: ‘Anyone came.’

Episodic sentences are typically used to state facts about some past event, and the utterance of such sentence indicates theknowledgeof the speaker w.r.t. such information. Yet the factive knowledge of an event may block any kind of inquisitiveness. For instance in (134), imagine a scenario where the speaker is talking about a previous party and wants to express that ‘everyone came’. However, knowing that ‘everyone came’ implies knowing ‘who everyone is’, e.g. the list of all guests. Then there is no real question about the identity of ‘anyone’. Post-suppositional inquisitiveness doesn’t satisfy, and orthogonality is trivialized. This idea is quite appealing, but a full-fledged proposal calls for a suitable framework incorporating modal notions. Thus hereby it is left for future works30.

Finally, it should be noted that the post-suppositional analysis (124) does not pose any distributivity effect on dou. It raises the question of whether we really need dis- tributivity effects to capture the semantic essence of dou. For unconditional or ∀-FC

30_{However, see Lauer (2009) for a post-suppositional analysis for -ever-like free choice items such as}

constructions, the same question arises as whether a universal/distributive force is a necessary ingredient in the production of orthogonality, or it is just post-suppositional inquisitiveness that is needed. We leave the question open. But the (wonderful) irony should be highlighted, as we started offdefendingdouas a generalized distributor, yet end up questioning it ourselves.

CHAPTER

5

Conclusion and Outlook

The thesis presented a two-step investigation of the multi-functional Mandarin particle

dou. The first step is an attempt to reach a conceptually uniform analysis ofdoufrom its most basic use, i.e. as a quantifier-distributor. Building on Lin (1998)’s analysis ofdouas a generalized distributor with a plurality requirement, we showed in Chapter 2 that this characterization can be extended to cover the other functions of dou. In doing so, we proposed a novel mechanism of deriving universal free choice effect, which stems from the analysis of unconditionals presented in Rawlins (2013). The second step is partially inspired by the first step—doubeing able to associate with both plural noun phrases and inquisitive expressions drove us towards the implementation of Dynamic Inquisitive Semantics (InqD), where inquisitive and plurality informations are coordinated. As

two interesting outcomes, Chapter 4 showed that theplurality requirementofdoucan be characterized asinquisitivenessmanifested on different levels, and a post-suppositional characterization ofdoumay be able to capture the quantifier-distributor use ofdou.

The analysis ofdoupresented in Chapter 2 stands out from the previous approaches in the following aspects. First, in our account, dou is compositionally friendly, as the characterization ofdouas a generalized distributor fits the impression thatdouis always attached to the remnant VP in forming constituents. Meanwhile, theleftnesscondition, i.e. the fact that the NP-associate ofdouis always on its left, can be simply accounted for by the common assumption thatdoucarries an [+EPP] feature. Second, our analysis of

douis intuitively approachable, as it stems from the characterization of its most common use. Also methodologically, it suggests a bottom up approach to the study of multi- functional particles in natural language might be fruitful—by formally grasping the common use, the variations may naturally follow.

The thesis is rich in future directions. First, our analysis of∀-FC constructions follows the vision of Rawlins (2013) that unconditionals and free choice can be uniformly cap- tured by the notion of orthogonality. It will be interesting to compare different instantia- tions of such vision (e.g. Szabolcsi, 2019) with cross-linguistic perspectives. Meanwhile, our analysis for unconditionals and free choice effect stopped at the derivation of the se- mantic effect, without further addressing their fine-grained modal implications, as well as their licensing conditions. Fortunately, within the dynamic framework featuring rich and flexible context information, further implementations seems approachable. Last but not least, as mentioned in the end of Chapter 4, whetherdoucarries a distributivity effect is after all questionable. This leads to more general questions as whether orthogonality

(shown in Chapter 2 as derived by distributivity) requires a universal/distributive force, or just post-suppositional inquisitiveness. Further, if we consider the scalar reading, the question becomes whether the scalar feature is instantiated universally over the alternative set. As a final remark, the study ofdouopens up the possibility of a large- scale connection between major subjects in formal semantics, and further investigations would surely bring us closer to the linguistic underlyings of logical reasoning.

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